Alignment to Assessment Standards and Purpose of Lesson

• RI.8.3 – Opening A: Students analyze a distinction among ideas in an excerpt from the text.
• RI.8.6 – Opening A: Students use their understanding of a distinction made in the text to determine the narrator’s point of view in the text.
• RI.8.3 – Work Time A: Students analyze how the text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events in chapters 19 and 20 of Farewell to Manzanar.
• RI.8.3 – Closing and Assessment A: Students identify the significant ideas conveyed in chapters 19 and 20 by details as well as connections or distinctions made amongindividuals, ideas, and events.
• In this lesson, students focus on working to become effective learners by persevering as they read and analyze the complex anchor text.
• Chapter 18 of Farewell to Manzanar is not read in this curriculum due to time constraints.

Opportunities to Extend Learning

• Encourage students to read chapter 18 (skipped due to time constraints) and analyze it for connections and distinctions among individuals, ideas, and events to deepen understanding of the text.
• As students read and learn more about the events involved in Japanese American internment in Farewell to Manzanar, invite them to research particular aspects of this time period that are of interest to them, such as other experiences of post-camp life. Consider providing questions like the following to guide this exploration:
• Who were the key individuals involved? How are they connected? What distinctions are there between these individuals?
• What are the key ideas or events? How are these ideas or events connected? What distinctions are there between these ideas or events?

How It Builds on Previous Work

• In the previous lesson, students participated in a Jigsaw protocol to read chapters 14–17 of Farewell to Manzanar. Students analyzed their assigned chapters for meaningful connections and distinctions and shared their findings with classmates. Students complete similar tasks in this lesson, reading and analyzing distinctions and connections in chapters 19–20 in order to deepen understanding of the text.

Support All Students

• At this point, students should be reading the text independently. However, if some or all students need more support, read several pages aloud and then release students to read independently, in pairs, or in small groups. ▲
• The subject matter in chapter 20 includes descriptions of appearance, gender, and sexuality that may be seen as insensitive. For example, as Jeanne struggles to make sense of her identity in a post-internment world, she refers to herself as “the slant-eyed face, the Asian” (142). In a later passage, Jeanne describes her attitudes toward her maturing body and wonders “how an Asian female can fascinate Caucasian men” (147). Offer support as students process these problematic passages. Invite students to discuss their reactions aloud, practicing respect and empathy for one another’s feelings. Use point of view work to help students establish distance from the ideas presented in the text; by more directly assigning the text’s ideas to the individuals in the text, students can better balance an understanding of Jeanne’s attitudes with their own rejection of those attitudes.

Assessment Guidance

• Review students’ Connections and Distinctions: Farewell to Manzanar note-catcher to ensure students understand how the text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events in Farewell to Manzanar.

Down the Road

• In the next lesson, students will continue to read Farewell to Manzanar, chapter 21, and continue their work analyzing connections and distinctions and deepen their understanding of the text. Students will apply their learning to the Mid-Unit 2 Assessment.